


Change Request

by sea0fseren1ty



Category: Kalyeserye (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, F/M, IT AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-20 00:55:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8230634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea0fseren1ty/pseuds/sea0fseren1ty
Summary: Just a typical day at the office...a random scenes from the IT AU that I may or may not write in the future





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> for @aosfiction

“Faulkerson.”

“Mendoza.”

“So.”

Richard Faulkerson Jr. waited for her to give him a piece of her mind. He has practically memorized this routine by now. They had versions of this same discussion since he started on this job six months ago.

“Why can’t your team guarantee a 99.99% service level for the firewall? The service needs that service level from your system,” she asked in a calm voice.

It’s rare to hear that tone of voice from Maine Mendoza, head of the New Products and Services division of ARS Communications. That tone meant one thing. She’s at the end of her patience. Her team knew that she reserves this tone for extremely difficult people, like Richard Faulkerson, Jr., the head of the Information Security division.

Outside her office, the members of her team were all sitting at their respective cubicles pretending not to pay attention to the meeting that’s currently happening. Maine’s office has semi-opaque glass walls and her team can see her silhouette sitting at her desk while Richard’s was on one of the visitor chairs.

“Here we go again,” Jamie said opening her phone. She typed, “ _ Confirmed. They’re at her office,” _ and pressed the “send” button.

A few minutes later came a reply from Jonathan, an analyst from Information Security. “ _ I knew Boss will be there. What’s the current score? 2-0 in favor of Boss?” _

While Maine’s and Richard’s teams started exchanging gossip, an argument was brewing inside the office.

“Maine, as I’ve explained earlier, we can’t just adjust our service level to that number. Your servers are behind a firewall whose overall reliability is 99.9%. That’s the limit already.”

“Yes, so you say but are there other options? Whatever happened to your ' _security will not be a stumbling block for business'_  speech six months ago?" She said imitating his voice at the last statement. "Well, mister, you’re team has been the cause of delay for my projects!” Her palms hit her desk in frustration.

“I also told you that security will not be a hindrance as long as business owners tell us the exact requirements of a project so we can manage your expectations. Now, why is the business requesting a change in term of service level at this time for the firewall? Shouldn’t this be part of a new project instead of a change request?”

“Well, when we first launched Project Space, there were issues with the system. The servers were not able to process user registration requests and our customer service team had to handle an increase in user complaints. Now that Jean wants to expand the services that we are offering under that project, he wants to make sure that the incident will not happen again. Hence the request.”

“I’ve reviewed the incident report on that and it’s not a firewall reliability issue.” Richard insisted.

“Well, he wanted to make sure the IT team delivers the system perfectly this time. And the Service Management division agreed on a change of service level. You are the only one who didn’t.” Maine pointed out.

“Well, your servers are not shared with other systems. That’s not the case of the firewall.”

Maine sighed. “Again, I already know that. And I was listening when you presented alternatives that involve a large amount of money. I understand, I do. But, do you realize that this is the third project you’ve BLOCKED?

“Now, Maine, ‘blocked’, is a harsh word. The other two projects were launched, right?”

She raised her eyebrow. “I had to add another week for re-testing for the first one! ONE WEEK! We cut it close on that one. The competition launched a similar service a week after. Then I had to sign a risk acceptance certificate for the second!”

She stood up and started pacing. “And now, you want me to request for an additional budget so I can get the service level that I want!”

She looked at him. “What’s frustrating is that I see your point  _ every time _ . But please see it from my point of view too. I have to explain this to the bosses. And they just see the big picture. They don’t care about the details.”

Richard stood up and went to where Maine was and guided her to one of the chairs for visitors. He sat on the chair across from her. “Maine, I do see the big picture. My team and the other teams in the IT department do too. It’s the reason why we want to recommend the best system for a project. But you have to tell us immediately when those requirements change. We can be flexible if there’s enough time.” He patted one of her hands.

“I hate you right now.” 

He smiled. “No, you don’t. Coffee?”


	2. RFI v.1.0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The missing coffee scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what a sleepless night can do.

"Here you go."

He placed a cup of chai tea and a cinnamon swirl cupcake in front of her. He, on the other hand, had a cup of peppermint tea and a croissant.

Richard and Maine were at a tea room a block away from the office.

"So this is why you’ve taken me here instead of to the cafe across the street."

"You did say you like their cupcakes better…"

"And the cafe has a poor tea selection and is teeming with our coworkers." She smiled.

"Not our co-workers in general. Your team. My team. One or two will show up. They always do."

"I did see Jamie exchanged glances with Cris on our way out."

"I bet they already told my team. I would have to deal with their knowing looks later."

She laughed.

“I worry that there will be a day that they will catch me off-guard with their comments and I end up blurting something."

"Faulkerson, that would make you an incompetent security officer. Isn’t confidentiality one of the pillars of information security?"

"You still remember that discussion, huh?" His gaze at her softened.

She was looking at him intently. "I’ve never forgotten our conversations."

Then she smirked "Especially those that end up in a full blown shouting match."

"Hey! What does that--"

His question was interrupted by his phone vibrating. He was about to cancel the call when he noticed who was on the line.

"Shit. It’s Leo." Leo Antonio is the Chief Information Officer of the company.

After a quick conversation, Richard turned to Maine with an apologetic look on his face. He took her hand.

"Incident?"

He nodded. "It’s red."

She cursed. Red means it’s a critical service. Any incidents related to critical services would mean a loss of millions for the company. "Why are you still here? Go."

"I’m sorry, Maine. I’ll make it up to you."

"I know. Go and be brilliant, Faulkerson."

He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before he left.

She checked her phone for updates. She saw the message sent by Leo to all system owners.

_ Looks like you are going to have to take a raincheck on dinner, Faulkerson. _

  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Distributed Denial of Service

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The incident that interrupted the scene at the teahouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Companies have their own ways of dealing with IT incidents. While the world is inspired by experience, the technical scenes described here are from my overactive imagination. I exaggerated things a bit.

When Richard reached the company’s Security Operations Monitoring Center, he found the IT group’s incident response team already working with other divisions to help troubleshoot and resolve the incident. 

The incident response team is a team Richard created three months after he started working for the company. The members of the team are from different divisions within the IT group and the purpose of the team is to respond to highly critical incidents. _Our incident response team is going to be tested by this._

Jay, the head of security operations was on the phone. Mark, the IT production support services head and Dianne, the team leader for critical services were looking at the logs. They were being assisted by Nix, the firewall administrator and CK, the head of the forensic investigation team.

Innah, the head of the Core Services division and Leo arrived shortly after he did.

He called the attention of everyone in the room. He pointed to the meeting room adjacent to the monitoring center. “Team, let’s provide a status report first so we will know what will be the next steps.”

Once everyone involved was seated, Richard addressed the team. “How did it start?”

Innah explained. “Customer service received an unusual amount of complaints from our partner retailers. When they tested the service, they encountered the same issues so they escalated the problem. We raised it to both IT and Engineering for checking.”

“Boss, I just talked to Robert from engineering. They confirmed that there are no outages on the network,” Jay said.

“What about our internal network?”

“The servers are accessible from the workstations of the system administrators and the IT Network services team said the network routes have not been changed. Both teams are at the Data Center. They’re double-checking physical connectivity.” Mark reported.

“No changes to the firewall policies and logs show that there is traffic between the servers and between the servers and the DMZ network.” Nix confirmed.

“So based on what you are all reporting, the problem is not on the network and the firewall. What about on the application side?” Leo inquired turning to Mark.

“Jane and her team are currently looking at those.”

“Our priority is to restore the service.” Richard said. “Can we re-route the connection to another segment?”

“Working on that, boss. We just need the go signal from the network team.” Jay confirmed.

“CK, check the grapevine. If everything is the same on our side, then we must look at external threats. See if this is just an isolated case.”

“I’ve informed all business units. If this is not an isolated case, then the whole IT team is up for a long night.” Leo proclaimed.

“Jay, ask your team to prepare the necessary documentation so we can be ready once the network team has mapped the plan for a reroute of the servers.”

“Keep us updated. Innah and I have a meeting with the CEO and the VP for Core services.” Leo and Innah then exited the conference room. The rest of the team followed.

Richard felt his personal phone vibrate. He took it out of his packet and looked at the notification.

> _ They’re asking all system owners to assign someone to monitor their respective services. Is the situation that bad? _

He quickly typed a response (she hates waiting).  _ Just a precaution. _

> _ Alright. I’ll have my team check our systems. Goodluck! (^-^)v _

He smiled at the last message and then pocketed the phone. He knew she would not expect a reply to her last message. She already used her favorite “cheerleading” emoticon.

Three hours later the service was finally restored.

Three hours (and several boxes of pizza) after that, Leo and Richard decided that the system is stable enough to let regular teams take over from the incident response team.

“We will do a debrief tomorrow. Right now, I want you all to rest. It’s been a long day.” Richard addressed the team.

“Anyone up for a couple of drinks?” Jay suggested, on their way out of the Monitoring Center.

His suggestion was met with a chorus of “Hell, yes.” and “Sure, why not” from the other members of the team.

“What about you, Boss?” Jay turned to Richard.

“I’ll pass.”

“Alright, Boss.”

“Don’t have too much fun, team. Remember, we still need to debrief. Be at the monitoring center at 10:30 tomorrow.. Lunch is on me afterwards.”

Richard watched the team go towards the direction of the elevators. He went to his office to get his things. He also sent a message.

> _ System restored. Will be home in an hour. _

He received an immediate reply.

> _ Leave your car. Pick you up at the entrance of the building in 10. _

He was surprised at her reply.  _ Did she wait for me? _

He then called building administration to tell them about leaving his car overnight and proceeded to the entrance as instructed.

Her car was already parked in front of the building. He opened the passenger door and got in. Once inside he gave her a once over. Her face is already free from makeup and she was wearing a white V-necked shirt and plaid lounge pants. He leaned towards her to give a hug and a kiss to her right temple. She smelled like the lavender shower gel she uses at night. He immediately relaxed.

“Thanks for picking me up, Mendoza.”

“You’re always welcome, Faulkerson. Now, let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) is a form of attack where a website is bombarded with junk traffic so legitimate users would have problems accessing the said website.


	4. Confidentiality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This occurs six months before the first chapter.

“Did you hear about the latest news from the IT group?” Jamie Velasquez whispered to her fellow members of MCTP10 (Management Cadetship Training Program Batch 10). It was Wednesday and as per tradition, the group’s out for dinner, drinks and gossip. They were at their favorite place, a hole in the wall restaurant some thirty minutes away from the company headquarters.

“Wasn’t there a sort of ‘thing’ that happened there last Monday?” Cristina Rivera guessed. She too had friends in IT and they mentioned that the group’s general assembly was particularly memorable.

Jamie first looked around. They chose this place specifically for its distance from their office. So they can vent about work frustrations in peace. They never saw any of their colleagues at this restaurant but checking for any eavesdroppers has been Jamie’s habit since the beginning. “Sir Leo finally found a replacement for Sir Ed, who retired last month. Information Security has a new division head.”

“So? Getting a new head for information security is expected.” Max Austria stated.

“But when the head’s pretended to be a ‘mystery consultant’ for a week then reveal his findings during last Monday’s assembly without offending anyone even if he was already pointing out the lax security practices everyone in IT is doing, you would definitely remember him.”

Max who was taking a drink when Jamie explained, choked. “Seriously?”

“Jonathan said that he is technically a security consultant. At least he was before the company decided to hire him so he could concentrate on overhauling the security division.” Jonathan is Jamie’s twin brother. While Jamie chose to apply for a business position, Jonathan chose to enter the IT training program.

“What does that mean for our teams then, Jamie?” Greg Chua inquired. “More work?”

“We don’t really deal with security directly. That’s the technical consultant’s job. So most likely, they will be the ones affected.” Cris guessed. Before she was accepted into the MCTP10, she spent 3 months as an intern at the Project Management office of the IT group.

“That’s my guess too.” Jamie agreed. “We will know soon enough.”

“What’s his name?” Max asked.

“He failed to tell me that. I could tell he was way too impressed by his new manager. It took me two days to pry the story out of him. However, I do know that the new head will be attending all IT project kickoff meetings just to get acquainted with the process.”

The conversation then shifted to other topics and the subject of the new information security head will not be brought up until a week later.

***

Maine Mendoza heard a knock on her door. She didn’t reply to the knock, expecting that the person at the other side of the door will enter after knocking. Anyone she has ever worked with within the past year knew that they can freely enter her office after giving a “courtesy knock” (as long as the door’s unlocked).

“Maine? You wanted to see us?” Jamie asked from the doorway. Cris was standing next to her.

Going through MCTP means being assigned to different departments for 6 months before getting a permanent assignment. As soon as they finished the program a year ago, Jamie and Cris were assigned to the company’s newest division - New Products and Services. The division was also headed by a newbie, Maine Mendoza.

“Yes. Can you and Cris attend the ‘Business and Security’ orientation? I have to talk to Jean and Innah about a new project that will conflict with the orientation.”

“That’s today, right?” Cris confirmed while Jamie hesitantly asked, “But isn’t that for managers?”

“Not necessarily. The summary on the meeting invite said that each division should send a representative who is expected to cascade the information. Division heads are invited for courtesy’s sake. But don’t worry, I’ll try to drop in after my meeting.”

“You should drop by, M. You haven’t met the new Information Security head since you’ve been on a business trip.” Cris said.

Maine is not the typical boss. On their first week working together, she told them not to address her as “Ma’am or “Miss”. She explained that she doesn’t want her position to hinder the team from bringing up any work-related issues. It took about a month before Jamie, Cris and the rest of the team (there are four others) called her _“Maine”_. Sometimes, they call her M (when she’s acting more of their boss).

“What’s special about the new manager? Is he what, gorgeous or something?” Maine asked.

“Drop dead.” Cris confirmed. “He looks like he could be a model or an actor. But we all know you probably won’t be interested.”

“Charming too. Everyone’s crushing on him and his smile.” Jamie added remembering the buzz after the IT team left the conference room yesterday. She swore some of the meeting attendees had a dazed look.

“True. And it looked like he has heard of you, M. He asked us about you. We told him you were busy.” Cris shared.

“Wait. He **_asked_ ** about me?” A suspicious thought entered Maine’s mind. _Could it be? But he would tell me._ **_They_ ** _both would._

“Yes. Knew you by name.”

“Hmmm. Gorgeous... Charming... Killer smile... Knew me… Tell me about the smile. Anything... unusual?” Maine suddenly had a glint in her eye. _Who am I kidding? That man would definitely say ‘yes’ to anything Tatay requests of him._

Jamie didn’t know how to interpret that glint. Still she answered. “He has a dimple on his left cheek. We found out because he smiled after mentioning your name.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Dimple? I see. Well, I would definitely drop by the orientation. I would like a word with him. Oh, and if he asks, tell him I’m not coming.” She started to mutter something under her breath.

Jamie and Cris exited Maine’s office after that. On their way back to their respective cubicles, Cris asked, “What was that about?”

“Curious, right?”

Back at her office, she sent a text message. _When are you planning on telling me that your ‘secret project’ is ARS Comm, Faulkerson?_

Three floors below, Richard Faulkerson Jr. felt himself break into a cold sweat after reading a text message. _I am in **so** much trouble. Better prepare for war. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confidentiality is one of the pillars of information security.


End file.
